


District 9

by ocean_bakon



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 08:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocean_bakon/pseuds/ocean_bakon
Summary: They say people are born different.THEN WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE WERE ALL THE SAME?Us, brainwashed into the same system they expected perfection.SO HOW CAN WE BE DIFFERENT?A sign. An omen.A GLITCH.





	District 9

“Chan. It’s your duty to make sure they don’t stray from the path.” Those were the rules Chan had been going by since the start of his life. He was created to be a supervisor. He was created to make sure everyone was the same. That no one was different. 

They were in the gardens now. Chan and his group. Chan patrolled the isle with his digital notepad in hand, watching the boys tend to the flowers on the giant hedges. 

Chan turned around to walk back the other way. As he did so, he noticed something. Something that wasn’t supposed to be there. It was different. 

He walked up to the thing and saw it was one of the flowers. Except it wasn’t grey. It was...red. The flower was red. 

The flower had a ring of sunlight cascading onto it. Impossible. The only light in here was the fluorescent light bulbs that hung over their heads. 

Chan looked up. There was a hole in the ceiling. A shattered glass hole in the ceiling. But this was an open roof area. How would there be…?

Chan reached to touch the flower. Then pulled his hand back. He had to discover what was going on before someone noticed and became different. Like that flower. 

He broke into a sprint, running out of the garden to get to the outside. It was night outside. Another reason why sunlight shouldn’t be shining through whatever it was coming through. 

Chan kept running until he tripped over something. He slid across the ground, his uniform getting mildly scratched. Chan sat up and looked at what he tripped over. 

It was one of the patrolling drones. A patrolling drone with glass around it. Chan stood up and picked up a piece of glass to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. 

It was real. He felt the glass on his hand, feeling each and every crack. He looked up. There was sunlight streaming right into his face. How? He was outside. There’s no way there could be another outside. 

Chan backed up, not being able to comprehend what was going on. He dropped the glass and put his hand to his head. 

There was a pounding in his head that he had never felt before. It felt like his brain was hitting the inside of his skull. It felt like his brain was breaking. 

He kept backing up until he hit something. Chan spun around to see what it was, but it was nothing. There was nothing there. 

Chan put a hand out and it hit something. It hit a barrier. A barrier that pulsated a purple ripple from where his hand was. 

That’s when Chan realized they were trapped in a cage. They had been since they began their lives. 

Had they really begun their lives at all? 

Chan pulled his hand away from the barrier. He had to get out of here. He and his group had to get out of here. Out of this cage. 

But how? 

Chan thought for a minute before he remembered a white bus he saw when he was taken on a tour around the...the cage. 

Chan didn’t even know if it still ran. But he would try to get it running again. He wanted to leave this place of sameness. 

He ran back to the gardens, finding his group in the same spot where he left them. 

“Time for evaluation. Back to the rooms.” He said. Everyone turned to him and walked in a line to the rooms. Chan followed behind them after he picked up his notepad he had dropped when he started running outside. What seemed to be the outside. 

At the end of each day, there was always an evaluation. Chan would go around and scan each members wrist, a digital number being implanted into their skin. This was shown to the people who ran the place, and they decided their next activity. 

Chan looked at his notepad. He had to wake them up from the program. The program that made them the same. He had to show them something different. 

Maybe he could tell them something different. He remembered his notepad could print out tiny pieces of paper that were attached to someone’s clothes as a warning if they differentiated.

He tapped around on his notepad, typing the words ‘We don’t belong here.’ on the notepad, printing out eight tiny strips of paper with those words on it. 

He would give those to him when he had to evaluate them. 

By the time Chan was done planning, they had reached the rooms. Each boy stood in front of his assigned room, and held their wrists out. 

Chan took hold of the tiny scanner on a moveable cart right by the first boy’s room. He started scanning each member’s wrist and then handing them the tiny paper. When he was done, he put the tiny scanner back on the cart. 

Chan waved a hand for them to go to their rooms. Each boy turned around at the same time and entered their room at the same time. Chan had been doing this for years now, watching this same thing for years now, and he just realized how scary it was. He realized how unnatural it was to see something happen by multiple people at the same time. 

He turned around and entered his room. He sat on the bed and hoped that each member woke up. He hoped his message broke them free from the system. 

Hours had passed before Chan exited his room to check on the boys. He looked into the first kids room through a tiny window on his door. He looked scared. He was also holding his head. 

Maybe his head hurting was Chan breaking away from the system. The boy then made eye contact with Chan and ran to the door. 

Chan opened the door, and the boy grabbed his arms. “Chan, what’s going on? 

“Calm down-“ Chan then stopped. He never knew these boys names. But they knew his. He had been talking to them for years and he didn’t know who they were. “What’s...your name? What’s your name?” Chan asked softly. 

“I- I don’t know.” The boy said. It seemed like they didn’t know who they were either. 

Chan looked at the boy. “It’s okay. We’re getting out of here.” 

The boy nodded, seeming to know what Chan was planning. The two got the other boys and Chan led them to the white bus. 

They walked in silence. In fear of getting caught. In fear of being the same again. 

They made it to the bus and Chan pried open the back doors. He watched as each boy jumped into the bus. Chan followed once they were all in the bus. 

He turned and shut the doors, seeing a bunch of colorful fabric laid all around them. 

They were clothes. Clothes with color. Not just white. Chan realized they would need a disguise, and these clothes were the perfect disguises. 

“Take off the white suits. Put on something. Put on anything.” Chan said, moving to the front of the bus. He’d change later. 

He looked at a huge wheel in the front and then a key in a slot. He touched the key and turned it. 

The bus roared to life. And then the sirens started to sound. “Warning. There’s been a breach in District 9.” A voice warned through speakers that were placed everywhere in the cage. 

Chan had to get these boys out of here, now. He looked down and saw pedals on the ground. He pressed one and the bus lurched forward. Chan pressed harder in that pedal and the bus ran forward. 

“Hold on!” Chan yelled as they were nearing the border. 

The bus rammed into the border and the border broke like glass all around them. Chan threw his arms in front of his face to protect him from debris. 

The bus stopped, and Chan was thrown into the wheel. He looked up, then looked behind him. Everyone seemed okay. “You guys okay?” He asked.

He heard a groan from some people and an ‘Okay’ from others. Chan pushed open the doors on the side of the bus, ushering each boy out of the bus. 

The boys looked up at the sky. They were in awe. They didn’t know a world outside of the cage existed. 

Chan had to break this moment when he heard the sirens get louder. “Everyone, move. I can see a building through the fog. Let’s go!” He yelled.

Chan ran to the front and led the boys to the building shrouded by a thick fog. He heard the boys following him, dead leaves crunching under their feet.

They arrived at the building and Chan threw open the door, watching and counting each boy that ran through. 

Once he was sure that he counted eight, he ran inside himself. He closed the door and found a pipe on the ground. He pushed it into the door’s handle and checked it, making sure it couldn’t be opened. 

He ran to meet up with the other boys. They found a large open area, each of them laid out on something, panting heavily. 

“Is everyone okay?” He asked. 

A boy raised his hand. “Yeah. We’re fine, but I know I need an explanation.” 

Chan nodded and explained how their brains had been programmed to fit a certain system. A system that kept them all the same and prevented differentiation. 

Another kid raised his hand. “How about we leave something here to show we’ve made it out, and anyone else that makes it out knows that we did it too?” 

That sparked a feeling in Chan he had never felt before. “Let's do it.” 

Chan started to look around for something that could be a landmark. A noticeable landmark. He looked for a bit before he saw a large cloth on the ground with colored cans around it. 

He touched a can. It did nothing. He then pressed down the colorful top and a cloud of color sprayed from it, covering his shirt in a red color. 

It was like paint. From a can. They could paint the cloth. He picked up the cloth and the cans, walking back over to the boys as he heaved the materials with him.

He came back and saw most of the boys were still sitting, a shaken look on their faces. Chan set down the materials and walked over to the boys, crouching in front of them. “Don’t think about that place anymore. Let’s start something new here.” He said.

The boys looked at him and nodded. Chan swore he saw one of them smile. 

He walked off and pulled the supplies with him. 

“I found a pole we could use.” The kid from before said, waving a pole above his head. 

“I found a cloth with some cans that spray paint. We can paint the cloth and tie it to the pole, like a flag.” Chan said, laying the cloth out on the ground. 

The kid nodded. He picked up a can and pointed the top of it the cloth, pressing the top, and spread a red line on the cloth. 

The other kids heard the noise and came to see what happened. The same kid picked up other cans and started spraying different colors on the cloth. 

“We need a name.” He said. “A group name, so people know who we are.” 

Chan remembered the rule he had been told. ‘It’s your duty to make sure they don’t stray from the path.’ 

“How about Stray Kids. We’ve strayed from their path.” Chan suggested. 

The kid painting nodded, and sprayed those words onto the cloth. He then tied the cloth to the pole and pulled the pole up. 

They had a flag. Now they just needed to find out where to put it. 

The kid gave the flag to Chan, and Chan looked around for a place to put it. He saw a complex pipe system and walked over. 

And then a loud bang was heard. Someone had broken through the door. Chan looked around at all the boys. 

He slammed the pole into one of the pipes and started running. “Let’s go!”


End file.
